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Self‐reported fears to common indigenous animals in an adult UK population: The role of disgust sensitivity
Author(s) -
Davey Graham C. L.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1994.tb02540.x
Subject(s) - disgust , psychology , indigenous , population , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , demography , ecology , biology , anger , sociology
Two studies are described which report on the prevalence and intensity of self‐reported fears to common indigenous animals in an adult UK population. The results of Study 1 suggest that (i) around a third of the variance in fear of indigenous animals can be accounted for by two factors which represent the theoretically coherent categories of invertebrates (e.g. slug, worm, cockroach) and fear‐relevant animals (e.g. rat, snake, bat); (ii) females tend to report significantly greater levels of fear than males to a large majority of prevalently feared animals; and (iii) there were no obviously consistent patterns of fear with age. Study 2 identifies individual disgust sensitivity levels as being an important and significant predictor of fear of animals in both the invertebrate and fear‐relevant categories, and finds that females report significantly higher disgust sensitivity levels than males. Since most of the prevalently feared indigenous animals appear to be disgust‐relevant, this latter finding helps to explain the generally higher fear ratings given by females.